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Born and raised in Port Arthur, Texas, a small Southern petroleum industry town, she gravitated to artistic interests cultivated by parents Seth and Dorothy Joplin. Janis broke with local social traditions during the tense days of racial integration, standing up for the rights of African Americans whose segregated status in her hometown seared her youthful ideals. Along with fellow band ... Read more in Amazon's Janis Joplin Store

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Here she is in all her glory. Four of Janis's original recordings, remastered, including many bonus tracks for added interest. The bonus CD "Rare Pearls" offers five cuts otherwise unavailable even to the most serious bootlegger. This box set is a must have for Janis fans. If you are torn between getting the 3CD box set and this one, start with this one first. Then get Winterland '68, Farewell Song, and the 3CD box set. Between all these CDs, you can create your own ultimate collection of top favorite Janis tracks, whether live, original release, or alternate take. It's up to Janis's fans to sort through the best of the best, and this box set is the best place to begin.(Plus you gotta love the artwork replicating Janis's psychedelic Porsche. Only complaint: I would have liked to have seen a booklet of photos and text included, but the liner notes written by John Cooke and others for the respective CDs give an excellent overview for each recording, none the less.)

I rate this Box Set 4 stars and a half.This Box Set contains 5 CDs with 55 re-mastered tracks feautirung all four Janis Joplin studio albums plus an exclusive bons EP of unreleased tracks.The first two albums are the ones Joplin recorded with Big Brother and The Holding Company: Big Brother and the Holding Company and Cheap Thrills.The other two are her solo albums I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, and her largely acclaimed Pearl.The last CD is the EP Rare Pearls with 5 tracks that can only be found here. Be aware that this box does not include every single track Joplin recorded. For example, the tracks Misery'n, Farewell Song, and Raise Your Hand can be found in her last Essential compilation, but they are not included here. I would not bother about that, though. If you like Janis Joplin, I would recommend you to get this Box Set. You won't need anything else. It also contains a 36 page booklet with interesting pictures, credits, and liner notes to the five albums included here.

I think that BOX OF PEARLS is exceptional, even better than the other box set of Janis'. It includes some of her songs from Calgary, Canada on 7/4/70, including a very interesting version of "Little Girl Blue" in that it has neither strings (as it is on the album I GOT DEM OL' KOZMIC BLUES AGAIN MAMA!) or horns (as I've heard is the case on the TV show THIS IS TOM JONES) in the background. And also, the remastered "Summertime" and "Piece Of My Heart" from Woodstock are no comparison to the gritty mono version which is a European import. "Magic Of Love" is a good tune to include as an extra track on CHEAP THRILLS. And lastly, the 5th CD, entitled RARE PEARLS has 2 outtakes from CHEAP THRILLS also, "Maybe", live in Amsterdam, Holland on 4/11/69 which also exists as a bootleg, and 2 songs, "Raise Your Hand" and "Bo Diddley" from a concert at the Fillmore East or the Winterland ballroom (there are conflicting reports) on 10/4/69. Anyway, this is a great and quite complete collection of music from a legendary blues/rock/folk singer.

This reissue of the two records Joplin and Big Brother released during her lifetime, her solo debut ("I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama"), the almost-completed and posthumously released "Pearl" and a 5 song CD of previously unreleased tracks provides another opportunity to rethink rock music's greatest female singer. The complaints about Big Brother's sloppy playing are inexplicable (if anything, the debut album is too precise and focused with no track taking over three minutes). And "Cheap Thrills" remains her greatest recording and the definitive example of the San Francisco sound.That said, this may not be the best way to collect Janis' music. The music and song selection on her two solo albums are way too tasteful--drowning out much of what made Joplin unique. Joplin's wild-woman-of-the-blues and psychedelic rock (and country--though it wasn't recognized at the time)persona meshed much better with Big Brother's aggressive and playful musicianship. The two albums she made solo are occasionally boring (heck, "Kozmic Blues" is frequently boring).My impression is that back in the 1960's even a female free-spirit as radical as Joplin felt so constrained by societal expectations that she ditched the collective, free-spirits of Big Brother for the more conventional, tasteful work of her solo career, never recognizing that she was losing comradeship and artistic kinship in the bargain. In an era of Courtney, Alanis and Madonna, the career choices that Joplin obviously agonized over, don't even seem necessary.The 3 CD "Janis" box set released in 1993 had numerous excellent previously unreleased studio outtakes and live recordings.Read more ›

As the only thing different from BOX OF PEARLS & buying the albums included within it is that only the box has the 5-song EP. So I will review that EP here and review the individual albums under their respective pages. So...the EP is OK. The 5 songs are not very good quality sound, unfortuately. "It's a Deal" and "Easy Once You Know How", the studio outtakes, are grubby and muddy, but the former song is the best. Janis and the band members are at their top form, the instrumentation of the group is phenomenal! The latter song is all right, starts out good, keeps falling down as the song proceeds. "Maybe" from Amsterdam, April 1, 1969 is available on a MUCH better-sounding bootleg European-only CD. The whole concert is fabulous and should really be released in its complete sound-blasting glory! "Raise Your Hand" and "Bo Diddley" are from the later, dying days of the Kozmic Blues Band. The band was probably the best of the post-Big Brother bands she led; it started out excellent, then died a slow, painful death after Woodstock. This is a month after the festival and the band would soon be gone. But "Bo Diddley" is stupendous as a Janis song. I've only heard one other version of this song and the version here beats that one into the ground. Also as an extra at the end of the song is an interview after an unnamed concert in 1969. So, in short, it's very nice to have in your collection and actually is a nice reward for buying the box.